02/05/2020 Shelford to Cambridge walk - SWC Saturday Walkers Club www.walkingclub.org.uk Shelford to Cambridge walk Granchester, the River Cam and the Cambridge colleges. Grantchester - the Rupert Brooke walk Length 20.5km (12.7 miles), 6 hours. For the whole outing, including trains, sights and meals, allow at least 11 hours. Toughness 5 out of 10. OS Maps Explorer 209 or Landranger 154. Shelford, map reference TL 465 523, is in Cambridgeshire, 6km south of Cambridge. Features This walk is long and flat and gets better as the day progresses after a somewhat dull morning: the route into Cambridge is lovely, particularly after Grantchester. Near the start, to lessen the amount of road walking which faces you today, you may take what is now a “Permissive Path” along a farm track besides the River Cam, from Little Shelford to Hauxton Church: you no longer need the farmer’s written permission in advance to walk along this path, as in bygone times. The route then passes through the village of Hauxton, with its interesting church, then on to Haslingfield for lunch. From there you head to Grantchester and tea in the Orchard tearooms before walking besides the River Cam into Cambridge. Try to conserve enough energy to take the walk’s tour of Cambridge colleges at walk-end. To avoid the less-than-exciting morning, and spend more time exploring Cambridge, a Cambridge via Granchester Circular walk has been devised (see Walk Options below). Whichever walk you choose, please note your tarmac count today will be high and this is telling on the feet. Consequently you may prefer to wear well cushioned trainers instead of walking boots. Walk You can shorten the main walk by taking a taxi from your lunch stop to Grantchester or Cambridge. In addition there are Options options to catch a bus into Cambridge from Hauxton or Haslingfield: for bus information call Traveline on 0871 200 2233. Cambridge via Granchester Circular SWC Walk 105 Cambridge Circular is 15km (9.4) mile version of this walk which cuts out the morning leg of the main walk and allows you more time for the City Centre tour of the University Colleges before you head out to Grantchester on a walk besides the River Cam. You stop for tea at the famous Orchard tearooms, and then you have a choice of a return walk to Cambridge, either via Trumpington or back beside the River Cam. Gardeners amongst you may like to visit the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens at walk end before taking the short walk which remains to Cambridge Railway Station. History Perhaps Friends of the Earth should employ poets. Writing a famous poem must be as effective a way as any of ensuring that a place is preserved forever. Rupert Brooke’s poem The Old Vicarage – he had rooms as a student at the Orchard, and later at the Old Vicarage, Grantchester – was written in a mood of nostalgia in a Berlin café, in May 1912. The poem celebrates not only Grantchester and the river (‘Laughs the immortal river still/Under the mill, under the mill?’), but the surrounding countryside (‘And sunset still a golden sea /From Haslingfield to Madingley’). Augustus John camped in Grantchester meadows with, as Keynes put it, his “two wives and ten naked children”; Brooke and Virginia Woolf (who dubbed his friends the “Neo-Pagans”) swam naked by moonlight; EM Foster visited the Orchard; Wittgenstein would https://www.walkingclub.org.uk/walk/shelford-to-cambridge/ 1/7 02/05/2020 Shelford to Cambridge walk - SWC come there by canoe; AN Whitehead and Bertrand Russell worked on their Principia Mathematica at the Mill House, next to the Old Vicarage. As for the church clock (‘Oh! Yet /Stands the Church clock at ten to three? / And is there honey still for tea?’), in Brooke’s first draft at half past three (the actual time it was stuck at for most of 1911). The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Great Shelford, was rebuilt at the expense of its rector, Thomas Patesley, in the early fifteenth century. It contains a mural of the last judgement which was painted about then, showing the devils on the left of Christ dragging away the damned in a chain. St Edmunds Church, Hauxton, is renowned as one of the oldest and most interesting small churches in Cambridgeshire, with Norman windows, doors and chancel arch; a thirteenth-century font bowl; a fifteenth-century pulpit and nave roof. It also contains a rare thirteenth-century fresco of St Thomas à Becket, which survived Henry VIII’s depredations; and, having been previously walled up, this fresco also survived the vandalism of the notorious puritan William Dowsing (who, in 1643, destroyed “three popish pictures” in this church). St Edmund became King of East Anglia in 856 at the age of 15, and was killed 13 years later by the Danes for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. The oldest surviving building in Cambridge is St Bene’t’s Church, which has a Saxon tower. Cambridge University was founded in the early thirteenth century by students and academics fleeing riots in Oxford, where the townsfolk felt imposed on by the academics. Within a couple of centuries, the university dominated the Cambridge townsfolk too: in 1440 Henry VI had a large part of medieval Cambridge demolished to make way for King’s College, intended for students from his new Eton school; in 1496 a twelfth-century nunnery became Jesus College; in 1542 a Benedictine hostel was transformed into Magdalene College; and in 1596 Trinity College was endowed by Henry VIII with funds from the monasteries he had vandalised. The Orchard Tea Rooms date from 1897, although the orchard’s apple trees were planted eleven years earlier. Soon after opening the tearooms became a favourite up-river café of college students. In the tearoom’s early years the owners took in lodgers to supplement their income, one being Rupert Brooke. Today college students punt up to the Orchard for tea – or a champagne breakfast after May Balls. During Cambridge’s Fringe Festival summer evening performances of Shakespeare are held at the Orchard. The Travelling Telescope to the west of Cambridge is built on a section of the former Cambridge to Bedford railway line. Owned and operated by Cambridge University, the telescope consists of a number of large aperture synthesis radio telescopes, the original of which date from 1957. Cambridge University Botanic Garden dates from 1846 and is a 40 acre garden which today contains over 8,000 species of plants from around the world, in a beautifully landscaped setting. Open April to September from 10am to 6pm; February, March and October from 10am to 5pm; and January, November and December from 10am to 4pm. Entrance fee (2020) £ 6.00. Travel Take the train nearest to 9am from Liver pool Street Station to Shelford. Journey time 1 hour 15 minutes. Alternatively, you can take a fast train from King’s Cross to Cambridge and change there for Shelford (one station back down the line to Liverpool Street). In addition to your day return to Cambridge you will need to purchase a single ticket from Cambridge to Shelford if travelling up from Kings Cross. Trains back from Cambridge run twice an hour to Liverpool Street and up to four times an hour to King’s Cross. Journey time 50-80 minutes. If you travel out from Liverpool Street and intend to return on a fast train to King’s Cross, ask for a (more expensive) ticket which will allow this. Lunch The suggested lunchtime pub is the Little Rose (tel 01223-870 618) in Haslingfield. Open for lunch on Saturday and Sunday only (2020), closed lunchtime weekdays. The pub serves basic pub food with steaks on Saturday and roasts on a Sunday. You should phone ahead to check that the pub is open (it has closed down at least once in recent years, and current opening is “hit and miss”); if not open, you will find a village shop just up the road where you can purchase a good selection of snacks for a picnick lunch to keep you going until Grantchester – and tea at the Orchard Tea Rooms. Should you prefer a late lunch in Grantchester you have a choice of three good pubs, the Rupert Brooke, the Red Lion and the Green Man: all usually serve food all day ( although a snack in Haslingfield, then tea in the Orchard is recommended ). Tea THE tea stop on this walk is The Orchard Tea Rooms (tel 01223-845 788) in Grantchester. It is steeped in history and although touristy, retains a great atmosphere so it is very popular with Cambridge and local residents as well as the many tourists who flock there. Consequently at weekends (particularly on Sundays) The Orchard is packed and you will have to queue to be served and wait for a table to become free under the orchard’s apple trees. But be patient as the wait is worthwhile. https://www.walkingclub.org.uk/walk/shelford-to-cambridge/ 2/7 02/05/2020 Shelford to Cambridge walk - SWC You may well be in need of a cuppa after finishing the tour of the colleges. You are spoilt for choice for venues in the City Centre. There are also kiosks on Cambridge Station which serve coffee and tea. Updates Minor updates July 2017. [Pre 2011 Editions] The farmer's path is now permissive - no need to write in advance Help Us! After the walk, we would love to get your feedback You can upload photos to the SWC Group on Flickr, and videos to Youtube.